Saturday, February 27, 2010

Hague Takes the Fight to Labour

I am sitting in the conference hall in Brighton listening to an excellent speech by William Hague. It's full of optimism, positivity and frankness. But what I liked in the first part of his speech was his willingness to take the fight to Labour. Here's an extract...

"When Gordon Brown took over, this, our great country, was the 4th largest economy in the world. Now it is falling behind and forecast within 5 years to be the 11th, behind not just growing giants like China, but behind our neighbours France and Italy. We were ranked 7th in the world for the competitiveness of our economy. Now we are 13th. We were 4th in the world for our tax and regulation. Now we are 84th and 86th. We are the last G20 country to emerge from recession. We are borrowing almost as much of our income as Greece, but the Greeks have more plans than Gordon Brown, like everyone else in the world, to do something about it. We are telling the British people the truth: we cannot go on like this. We say to them now: it is time, it is time to make the break. We cannot go on just borrowing money from China so that we can buy their goods and then borrow some more.

Gordon Brown is like a credit card company who will always send you another letter saying it would be so easy when in debt to borrow even more. Every family, every small business, everyone except this Government knows it is the road to ruin.

Last week Gordon Brown said the election should not be a verdict on the Government's past record. Let me tell him this: we will ensure that a country that wants to look to the future is fully aware of his record. He may not want to discuss his pension destroying, gold selling, golden rule-breaking, national debt-doubling, money wasting, tax raising, colleague rubbishing, pledge betraying, election bottling record but, oh boy, we do.

He says voters should give him a second chance. Look here Gordon, you've had 13 years now. You've had your second chance and your third. No one in Britain can afford to give you a fourth chance: no one in this country can afford another 5 years of Gordon Brown. So it is time for change. And if we do not take this opportunity, grasp this hour, to set a new direction for Britain, then I tell you in all frankness that it will be too late. It will be too late in 5 years' time to say we should have got rid of them, too late to reverse the decline: the debt will be too big, the bureaucracy too bloated, the small businesses too stifled, the slope Britain is sliding down will be too steep.

So to every voter listening to us now we say solemnly, if not now it will be too late. It is time, time to say we can rescue our country, time to refuse to get poorer and more indebted, time to say Britain is not doomed to decline, time to let the Labour party fight its squabbles out of power where it can do no harm, time to invite the forces of hell to get the hell out of Downing Street."

This is what we need. Gordon Brown's failures and appalling record as Chancellor and PM needs to be burned into the minds of everyone in the country. However long the election campaign these points can not be made too often. The thought of 5 more years of Labour destruction is too horrible to bear. Even with a conservative government it's going to be tough, but with the current lot given 5 more years we may never recover.

I have been a bit out of the loop today with the news but having turned on the TV to BBC news I have just landed on Gordon Browns speech at the welsh labour party conference and so far I like what he is saying then again I have still to turn the volume on.

Good speech however where was the Conservative party when the ONS produced the press release that upgraded the growth in the last quater to 3% which on closer inspection was actually a downgrade in growth for the previous 2 quarters?

The Conservative party needs to wake up and start refuting the rubbish that comes out of the mouths of this Labour Government. For far too long they have allowed them to peddle rubbish and get away with it.

For the sake of this country someone needs to take a firm grip on the pistol and start taking aim otherwise Labour will get away with it.distsly

Should be Dave's speech. Unless he is doing one of his no notes/lectern speeches which always go down very well. Obviously this speech is better from behind a lectern looking serious and not suited to DCs style.

and behind Hague... the nutter evangelists, the city bankers and the entire swathe of global warming deniers who can't do basic physics. Sadly, he's right about Brown, but I haven't heard the words 'sustainable' or 'alternative' drop from Tory lips in any kind of sane suggestion of what we can do to change the mode of 'borrowing so we can buy things from China.' Who's going to tell everyone the plasma screen TVs are off the agenda?

The Tories are doing the right thing in exposing Labours failure. The Time for detailed Tory commitments is in the Conservative Manefesto once Bottler Brown has either called an election or is forced to into an election.

The Gordon Brown media regieme will portray any positive Tory proposals as Negative before this point. Lets remember it is not the Tories running for re-election but Labour. Labour have failed in office so badly that the British tax payer has to pay the Bill for Labours mistakes. Brown is borrowing £277,719 every minute in order to try and cover up his economic failure. Gordon Brown in the last 13 years has framed economic policy around his personal ambition to become PM, Labour has doubled the national debt in this time. This is money down the toilet as Brown is usless as Prime Minister. Time to Give Gordon Brown the Boot.

No doubt this is a synthesis of the message that will be repeated during the election campaign.

skynine - typo alert - it was 0.3%.Not sure its a point that the public would pick up on or the press report. The BBC news did in fact point out that the recession was deeper in 2009 than expected and that 4Q activity was in fact lower.

Hands up who would prefer William Hague to lead the Conservative party rather than David Cameron...?

Labour will lie and spin from here to the election (and beyond) and the BBC will support them every step of the way.

IF the Conservatives really want to win this election they they need to fight as if they really want it. Not dirty but hard and relentless, we need less of the calm and collected Tories we need passion to enthuse the anti-Brown vote.

You spoke earlier of buttonholing Ben Brogan of the Telegraph, but you should ask the BBC people there about Radio 4 News bulletins.At 5pm, we got a few minutes of the Chilean earthquake, then the Tory Spring conference was mentioned. But immediately, we got a strong rebuttle from Gordon Brown,Every time! Every time Cameron or Osborne make a statement , we go straight to an instant rebuttle from Brown and most tdaimes Cable for good measure.It's so bloody obvious. And when there is no news from the Tories, most bulletins begin with "Gordon Brown said today..." Gordon Brown has announced a new..."It is so blatant.Perhaps you can buttonhole Andy Caulson. Does he ever complain to the BBC? To the Governors of the BBC?What is he doing for the massive salary he gets?

At last Hague has been let out of the attic. At last a Conservative is going on the attack. Usually it's just people like Grayling and Philip Hammond stuttering, backtracking, gaffing, apologising and having to defend the party from the rotweiller BBC pundits after inconsistent statements from Cameron and Osborne. Let's see more of William Hague (stateschool boy). I suppose they'll never let David Davis out of the attic following his stand on liberty. Remind the people how this Labour government have set about ruining this country.

Bird, it would appear that you are unaware of the basic rules governing the BBC in the run up to an election, which is that they must whenever possible give all main parties the chance to comment on each other's statements. They do exactly the same when a Labour speech is reported, asking for a Tory comment.

Some of you seem to live in an alternate universe where you would have the Beeb only report Tory Truths. We have a name for that - a Fascist State.

His speech is brilliant and is written and spoken by a great politician, one who was thrust into leadership at too young an age, when the Tory party had no hope of turning the tide.

If only he had done a Milliband or a Johnson, but alas, William has a backbone, so he took the opportunity with both hands. Let us hope one day, dear William will rise again to lead the nation to greatness.

Now as I remarked the speech was great, but the audience and Tory supporters know this, it will not get the lazy, the blood sucking benefit takers, the migrants who get special treatment, the public sector workers who have a vested interest in voting Labour to turn around and force change.

The only way forward is through money that is why I advocate the reintroduction of the 10p Tax band with an increase in allowances to £10,000 for those earning less than 25,000. This could be a big event to get the lower paid to realise just what Brown did to them. Pure Politics.

To pay for this reduce the 50p top rate of Tax to 44P and increase the 40p higher band to 44p. Cut NI by 1p with a promise to reduce the top rate to 42p in this coming parliament with a pledge to lower to 36p in the next two parliaments or as soon as UK finances allow.

Then cut working Tax credits and Child benefit a programme designed to keep people on benefits and tied to the state. We see young women dropping babies for property and benefit rights.

I would like to radicalise the NHS by giving NI back to the people who wish to buy a Medical insurance in the private sector to pay for medical services. So with this radical policy in place the bulk of NHS spending diverted to a World beating Children's health service and old age health service. Those adults from 18 to 65 should buy their own medical health insurance or pay NI and take a NHS health entitlement voucher.

The Welfare system should be a safety net not a way of life.

Next make foreign prisoners pay for their accommodation and food. If they have no means, they get just the basics food and blanket.

Take religion out of Prisons, if they were good followers of their religion they would not have broken our laws. Therefore, ban all forms of religion in prison, ban cigarettes and tobacco smoking and ensure no Drugs or telephones on the prison grounds, anyone found to have taken drugs or called any number with a mobile phone should have a year added to their sentence for every year of their original sentence.

A two- pronged attack on prisoners only jail people for two years as a minimum sentence.

Year one hard labourYear two rehabilitationPrison is not a place to teach, so cut education and make the prisoners work hard while inside.

Make the Tax system very easy and get more money in by empowering Taxpayers.

Close public pensions make them go private & reduce benefits of existing pensions to a minimum for all staff. Our very own Gordon Brown style raid on public sector pensions. Then restore the Tax relief on private pension’s dividends and see the stock market and sterling soar.

Finally- any company that has been privatised should pay an annual fee to use the name ‘British’ a royalty.

The Institute of Physics has just made the following devastating submission to the Parliamentary investigation into the Climategate scandal. It argues that the behaviour of the scientists involved has “worrying implications” for “the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method as practised in this context.”

Maybe you think that as well as the nutters and global warming deniers an institution with a membership of 36,000 physicists worldwide "can't do basic physics" either?

Son, look at this country now. It's not brilliant, but we're sort of all right. Would you believe that only eight years ago, when you'd just been born, people were fighting for scraps of food in the streets. There was a man called Brown. We don't speak of him much, but now you're old enough, and I have to tell you. It was when he was prime minister, in 2012, that everything collapsed. First there were riots, and then there was the dirty bomb at the Olympic Games. That was when your mother died. And it's why we can't go to the southeast any more.

The most incredible thing was that people voted for him at the election in 2010. I can't believe it now, but they did. He was already PM then and we were in big, big trouble, but people wouldn't admit it. And the opposition leader was a man called Cameron, and all he promised was more of the same. His party were called the Conservatives -- that means saving things. But there was nothing left to save. So it all fell apart.

How did they make things better? Well, of course, the Army had to take over, but you know about that from school. And there were a few sensible people left, just a few. The Duke of Hague was there, and it was him who started the Restoratives. No, not the BNP, silly boy, that's the opposition ...

One study on international competitiveness comes from the World Economic Forum (WEF). Admitedly, the study used a far broader range of criteria than those cited by Mr Osborne. Nevertheless, the UK was ranked 13th overall, down from 12th the year before.

A more comparable survey is the World Bank Group’s ease of doing business survey. This ranks economies by 10 different indicators that determine whether “the regulatory environment is conducive to the operation of business”

Overall, the UK was ranked fifth.

5th (or if you insist, 13th) is far better than 86th. Honestly, you Conservatives are behaving like a bunch of sixth formers at a hustings for the election of the head boy.

The crunch statistic is cash. Government receipts are down from GBP 600 billion to March 2008 to GBP 450 billion to March 2010. Month on month they are still falling - by GBP 9 billion in Januiary alone.

GDP, competition level and other statistics are easily subject to manmipulation. Cash is not. That is why Darling and Brown never mention it - except through a prism of confusing tripe about net borrowing, which is another heavily manipulated statistic.

For rhetorical purposes, cash is not as powerful as other stats, for some reason which I am not sure I understand. It's almost too powerful a comment to say government receipts have fallen by 25% and are still falling....might crash the £ even faster. Better to stay with the list he's got.

What I do know is that promises of "change" look a bit hollow to me. All I see is more of the same. Stultifying political correctness, ineffective policing, green idiocy, rampant immigration, economic failure and a complete disconnection from us normals.

The thought of another 5 years of Gordon is actually terrifying, but I'm not seeing anything different from Dave.

My vote was never going to the Labour Party, but I'm not sure the Tories are likely to get it now either.